


Downed Ships and Those Inside Them

by Corvid_Knight, NKMLN



Series: Integrated Worlds [17]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: alternian tech is horrifying, blood warning, body horror? Kind of?, but it really works here im sorry, collab fic, im a dumbass because this was meant for my earth c au, integrated worlds, jesus fuck, mild PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 09:23:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN
Summary: After the Alternian revolution and the fall of the Empress, there are still ships out in space on orders from Her Imperial Condescension. Some have been gone for sweeps.Eventually, they come back. And someone has to deal with them. Especially the...biological components of the ship itself. Who better to take that job than a former helmsman?(This fic is a collaboration withninja-kitty-more-like-no! she makes my AUs SO much better! =^u^=)





	Downed Ships and Those Inside Them

The ship is silent in a way that ships never are under power; there's only four sets of footsteps to make a dent in the silence, rather than a full crew's, and none of the normal ambient noise of engines and machinery running. The _lights_ are off. Even the emergency lights—the low-spectrum ones that would let your species see but do absolutely nothing for the human with you—are dark.

You're actually surprised that the human, a medic that the rules absolutely _insist_ is present for this—doesn't need guidance. Not that you could provide it; all your attention is on Psii, who's walking next to you, neither hesitant nor hurrying. Keeping the deliberate pace behind Karkat—who's the one with the flashlight, because you know from experience that Psii will eventually start shaking badly enough to drop anything he's carrying—is unbelievably hard for your friend. You can tell that by how he's almost crushing your left hand.

Your descendant glances back over his shoulder, the flashlight flicking up and reminding you that yes, there is a ceiling up there, and not just darkness so total that your eyes conjure up movement that isn't there. "The corridor branches—"

"Left," Psii bites out, lips pressing tight to stifle whatever else he planned to say, as the lights flicker into life for a fraction of a second. His grip tightens on yours, until you fear for the bones of your hand. " _Left._ "

There's the ghost of agony and despair on his face and in even that single word. Karkat sees it too; you see the concern in his expression even as he turns the way Psii says to go. He doesn't keep his eyes on the corridor in front of him, though, choosing instead to look back over his shoulder at Psii.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asks. He's never seen Psii like this, after all; Kankri's the one who accompanies you and Psii on this kind of job, but Kankri was offplanet when this ship phased back into realspace and transmitted its surrender to Earth—as opposed to returning to Alternia, or shifting back to hyperspace to join the one of the scattered pockets of trolls still loyal to the mostly-fallen Empire.

The transmission was unmistakably that of a badly-drained helmsman. That's why Psii is here, rather than a team of technicians who _don't_ have such a painful history with starships.

Speaking of Psii, he still hasn't answered. Just kept walking, eyes shedding sparks every few seconds. You suspect that if he was built more like you, those would be tears.

"Psii. _Psii._ " He still doesn't respond. Okay.

You stop walking and Psii nearly drags you off your feet as he tries to keep going. Dr. Egbert nearly crashes into you; she obviously wasn't expecting that. Neither was Karkat; the look he gives you would be comical, if you weren't standing in a downed ship with a still-dying goldblood somewhere in its depths.

Usually, it's not like this. Usually, when a ship returns from some mission set it by the Empress, in the time before the rebellion managed to take her down, the helmsman is either dead or free of the ship before they contact planetary government. But so many ships come back that even the small percentage of them that _do_ have a helmsman in need of help is a significant number, and there's groups on both Alternia and here on Earth, task forces trained in getting those psionics out.

Psii signed up as soon as they let him. As soon as he could convince the authorities that he'd recovered from his own time as a helmsman, before his own psionics even came back. You've been with him every time they called him in.

"I'm fine," he says, finally, eyes still fixed on the lights. You still don't let him pull you towards the door that must be the helmsblock. Not until he looks at you. "Sign." He's completely ignoring Karkat and the human. Not a particularly good sign. "Sign—" He really is going to break your hand, you think as his grip tightens again and tiny red-blue lightnings swirls down around your contact with him, echoing the note of desperation in his voice. "Sign, _please_ —"

His voice breaks. So does your heart.

"Psii, shh, come here..." He's taller than you; you have to pull him down just a little to be able to get him into the embrace he needs right now, stretch up to run your fingers through his hair. Sparks jump between his horns and your hands, even though you're careful not to actually touch them. "We can turn around. The doctor can get the helmsman out—"

" _No._ "

"Yes, Psii. She can, she's trained—"

"Signless, _please_ —"

"You don't have to do this. There are others who can do this."

"Not like me." He breathes deep, still shaky, and tries to pull away.

You hold him for another moment, not just shushing him but crooning deep in your chest, the sound you'd make to a wounded grub.

Then you let him go, but for his hand in yours, and you keep moving.

* * *

Karkat opens the door to the helmsblock before either you or Psii can stop him, but Psii seizes your descendant's shirt and drags him back before he can step inside. Karkat squeaks, you catch him when Psii more-or-less drops him, and you're a good three feet too far away when Psii moves into the doorway.

He almost immediately turns away, eyes phasing blue-and-red and one hand coming up over his mouth.

Somethings dripping, inside that small room. You can hear it even from where you stand, and when you push Karkat away and move up beside Psii, you almost can't look.

It's a nightmare. It might as well be _your_ nightmare—as Karkat shines the light inside, you realize that the only real way to tell where helmsman ends and wires begin is to follow the wires up from where the blood's dripped down, find skin scarred by power being stripped from the flesh that gives it birth.

The helmsman tries to raise his head. The wires crackle, and the lights flicker up again, even more weakly than before.  
Psii makes a broken, painful sound.

" _Empty space,_ " you breathe out in the language you grew up with, and even that isn't enough. Even invoking the terrible nothingness between the stars doesn't begin to match the horror of what's in front of you, the horror of the knowledge that it might as well be Psii in there, that it _was_ him in there, for sweeps upon sweeps of pain and hopelessness and fear not that he'd die, but that he _wouldn't—_

Psii pushes you out of the way, gently, and walks into the helmsblock. As far as you can tell from his body language, he's calm, not bothered by this at all.

(He's so adept at burying emotions when this happens that it terrifies you.)

You follow him in, and watch as he pushes the wires aside, finding one and wrapping it around his hand. This time, he's the source of the low crackle, and it doesn't die away in a second or two; one of the darkened interfaces in the room comes to life, screen filling with rapidly-scrolling binary. Psii doesn't even glance at it, just keeps shifting wires with his free hand, clearing them away from the troll's face.

Cyan-and-viridian eyes blink, slowly, sparks still chasing each other through the pain-dull orbs as Psii touches their face.

"It's okay," he whispers, so quietly you can barely hear him. When he continues in Alternian, his voice only gets quieter. " _It's over. You've done so well...it's over. We're releasing you now. It's over, I swear to you..._ "

You bite down hard on your lower lip as tears start forcing themselves down your face. Karkat's hand brushes against your arm, soft and uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Dad—"'

He's right to be afraid. Sometimes things go wrong when the interface is broken; rescuers have been injured before. "Give me the light; then you can go—"

Karkat just shakes his head. Good. Brave boy.

Psii keeps talking to the troll, soft reassurances and promises as he steps to the interface and starts typing. Even one-handed he's faster than you would have believed, entering strings of commands until the screens on either side of the one he's using come online, spill out more binary code that you can't decipher while the first one switches to Alternian prompts, still flashing too fast to be dead.

" _I need the transferral release codes,_ " he says. Not to you. The helmsman makes the first sound you've heard from them, a noise that isn't anything more than an rough breath, and the screen on the right abruptly freezes, glitching out for a moment before displaying a string of code.

Psii types it in, and this time you can read the command on his screen.

**CURRENT HELMSMAN 18% CAPACITY**

**RELEASE? Y N**

"Catch them." Psii doesn't look up. You still know he's speaking to you. Even at this strange angle, you can read the fury and determination on his face. "The wires—they'll retract—"

"I know, Psii." You've already moved to where you need to be, directly in front of the column of wires. The troll within it is still limp and mostly-motionless, but for the small twitches as they try to raise their head enough to see you.

You reach out and smooth their blood-soaked hair back from those almost-darkened eyes, trying and failing to stop your hands from shaking. The eyes are the wrong color, the horns curve too sharply, but that doesn't matter.

You see him.

You see _Psii_. You'll see him here in your dreams, in your nightmares. Caught in the wires. A part of the ship. Stripped of his _self_.

There's a sickening _pop,_ breaking you out of your horrified vision, and the helmsman falls forward into your arms. As soon as they're free of the column they start trembling, hands weakly twisting into your shirt and cloak, unspeakably desperate for contact. The sounds that come out of them are choked, barely audible, a broken attempt to cry when they barely have enough energy to breathe on their own.

You step back, cradling the too-slight body in your arms as the wires finish retracting. As soon as they're completely free, the troll goes limp, and Dr. Egbert pulls Karkat forward, your descendant taking the former helmsman from you so the human can direct him out into the hallway to start stabilizing them.

As soon as your hands are free, you look up at Psii.

And you _freeze_ , body and mind both. He's standing there, too close to the column, arms already buried up to his shoulders in the wires—

No, no, no, no no no _no_ —

Psii shudders, head tipping back and mouth opening soundlessly as his entire body _flares_ with power. The old scars go so bright they leave streaks on your vision, every ounce of his psionics forcing itself into the workings of the ship. You smell something burning in the half-second that he stands there like that, as the ship creaks around you like a great beast dying.

Then the lights go out, and he jerks away, and you catch him as he staggers back. Before you can do more than touch him he's twisted around, legs going out from under him as he clings to you, leaving you to hold him up, keep him safe from falling.

Psii's sobbing so hard that you worry he won't be able to breathe, so violent that you doubt he can hear your quiet words. "Shush, brave one. It's okay. It's over, you've done so well, he's safe now..."

You're repeating his own words back to him, you realize as he shakes against you. Strider might call it ironic...you can only see it as painful. Sad.

Maybe not sad. He's alive, after all. They both are.

You hold him until he runs out of tears—and there _are_ tears on your face, soaking into your shirt, he's drained himself so fully that there's no psionics left in him to burn the tears away. By the time he stops, you're on the floor, your back against the terminal of interfaces, Psii huddled in your lap, curled so tightly against you that the height difference cancels out completely.

Even when he stops, you wait, carding your fingers through his hair and waiting for him to reach out of that well of fear and pain that you know you'll never really understand. You hold him, and you wait.

"I can still feel them," he whispers, finally, shifting to run his hands over his arms. Over the scars there. "I feel—the _wires,_ Sign, under my skin, in my body, they—I wake up and I feel them, nights, I want to scream because they're gone, because I can still—"

Your hands go still despite yourself, and Psii reaches up to take them, sighing shakily as you move your thumbs across his palms in small, gentle circles. "Psii."

"Signless."

"What do you need me to do?" you ask, as you ask after every time he shatters. You'll do whatever he asks and he knows it, knows you'd go to the ends of the universe for him, fill the space between the stars if it helped him heal from what he's lived through. From the sweeps spent dying slowly, in the service of the Empress.

Psii lets out a breath, something between a laugh and a whimper. "A shower. Sleep. That bitch's head on a pike."

"The normal stuff." This time he does laugh, weakly, and you smile and press a kiss to the top of his head. "Darkleer has your kids; should I stay at your h—"

"Yes." He doesn't let you finish.

You nod, resting your chin on top of his head as if you can protect him that way. The lights are dying again; the last vestiges of the power he poured into the ship is dissipating. You really hope Karkat and the doctor left the flashlight. "Are you ready to go?"

Psii's quiet. Considering.

Then he shakes his head, just slightly. "A minute longer."

"Alright."

You kiss his head again, holding him closer and waiting there in the growing darkness.


End file.
